Your Unlimited Life (3 page)

Hebrews 4:12 says:

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

What does the
soul and spirit
do? How do they work? What are their roles? The soul includes the mind, will, and emotions. It’s a connector or a joint between the spirit of man and the natural world. Everything that comes to your spirit has to get in your head somehow. It is through your soul that it is united with your spirit so you can use it, say it, and practice it. This is dangerous, because any time you get something in your spirit, you have to run it through your mind. If your mind isn’t right, you will twist it. We hear a clear word from God in our spirit, but by the time we interpret it with our mind, we can make it into something completely different. So the connection has to be good. The soul has to be right and we must continually feed spiritual truths from the Word into our mind.

Marrow
is where the body creates blood. You’ve heard of people needing a bone marrow transplant because of a blood disease, cancer, or some other problem. The marrow is a producer or a life force. It’s where the blood is created, and the blood is the life of the body.

T
HE
T
HOUGHTS AND
I
NTENTS OF THE
H
EART

Thoughts are the basic elements in your soul, and the intents are the basic elements of your spirit. So we’ve got soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and thoughts and intents. All of these are of the heart. If we get our spirit and soul, joints and marrow, and the thoughts and intents right by the Word of God, then we are going to have a good heart.

Remember Jesus’ words from Matthew 12:34-35:
“...out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.”

If your heart has a poor connection, wrong thoughts, you will find yourself struggling to make the growth you want to see in your life. You won’t make it. You won’t get the fruit that you are looking, praying, and working for. The tree won’t produce good fruit because the heart is where the key issue lies and it’s unhealthy. It all started with wrong thinking.

God’s Word is the key to getting your heart right. The Word of God is the sharp, two-edged sword that cuts out the stuff you don’t want and sharpens the things you do want. The Word works in the heart to make it healthy and fruitful. Mark 4 talks about the sower sowing the Word. Where did he sow it? In the heart. So when the heart is right, your life will produce good and when your heart isn’t right, your life will be a struggle.

When you become a Christian, your spirit is born again. Your spirit is recreated and you become a new person in Christ. You are one with the Spirit of God with direct access and authority to use His power that is now alive in you. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. But Paul says the mind needs some work done on it. Since you now have access to the greatest power, God, you are going to need to obey Paul and get your mind in alignment with what your spirit man is now yearning for. Breaking habits that hold you back starts by changing the negative thoughts that drive your life.

RENEWAL TRUTH

I am a new creature in Christ Jesus.

Old things have passed away, and the new has come.

(2 Corinthians 5:17)

I wish we could get the mind born again and changed instantly. It could be like the old movie Matrix; we could be like Neo, hooking our mind up and getting a renewed mind download! Too bad it is not that easy. “Just do it, Lord! Go ahead, I give You permission.” But the Lord says, “You are made like Me, so I can’t change your soul. I can recreate your spirit, but I can’t change your soul. You have to do that.”

So how do we do it? Go back to Colossians 3:2:
“Set your mind on things above.”
Then,
“be renewed in knowledge according to the image of
[Jesus]
”
(v. 10). Begin to set your mind on the right things. Begin to change the way you think so you can think like Jesus thinks.

In every circumstance of life, I ask myself, “What would Jesus think about this? How would He respond to this situation? Am I being renewed in knowledge after the image of the One who created me?”

This is why it is so important that we know the Word. I don’t want to make up my own interpretation of what Jesus would do. Assuming certain choices as the moral compass to live by is vastly different than studying the Word and knowing the moral compass to live by. I want to base my thinking on the Word of God. That’s how we learn what Jesus would do. Jesus is the Word made flesh. If you know the Word, you will know the Lord. If you don’t know the Word, you won’t know the Lord.

By getting the Word working in your heart, you will learn how to be renewed in the knowledge of Jesus. This is what Christian growth is all about. This is how you break habits, change your life and your thoughts, so that you can have an unlimited life.

You would think this would be an easily understood and well-known truth, but it isn’t. As our television program goes out across the world, the most common response we get to this teaching is, “We’ve never heard this before.” Now, maybe what they are saying is that their pastor taught it or they’ve heard about it, but it never became clear to them. But the bottom line remains; it is a truth that we must learn and apply to our lives daily.

We all know people who have never understood what it is to get their heart right and get their mind renewed so they can be the people God created them to be. They are waiting on the sovereign will of God. They are wondering why God allowed this or that. They hear the teaching but they refuse to take responsibility for their mind and their life. The truth is, what is in their life came out of their heart, but they can’t see it. They can’t grasp it because they have never understood that out of the heart comes our way of thinking, our way of speaking, and the fruit of our life. What is in your heart comes out of your mouth, and forms your life.

RENEWAL TRUTH

I receive the abundant life that Jesus has come to give me,

and I reject the stealing, killing, and destroying which the

devil has been sent to do. I am a child of God, and His

blessings are overtaking me.

(John 10:10)

Another example of the power of the human heart is seen when we are in emergency circumstances. Studies have been done of people’s responses in life and death situations. You would think that people in a life and death situation would call out to God: “Lord, forgive me. I should have gotten saved a long time ago. I’m sorry I didn’t. I am giving You my life right now.” But this rarely happens.

When people are afraid, stressed, or in a life and death situation, whatever is in their heart will come out. Usually, if they are of the world, it’s cursing, anger, and bitterness. For the Christian we daily renew our thinking so when emergency strikes, it’s praise, prayer, and faith. You can’t wait until the end of your life to get right. You’ve got to work on your heart day by day, because at the end, whatever is in you will control you. Out of the abundance of your heart you will speak.

It may be valuable to give ourselves a little grace when anger, frustration, or the like comes out. Yet it is time we take responsibility for what is being spoken out of the mouth. We need to realize that if it weren’t in the core of our minds, it would not come out.

I’m not talking about covering it up, learning how to control your tongue, and learning how to stuff it down deeper. This book is not designed to teach mind over matter, or burying old pains that have created your world today. Your reality should be that it couldn’t come out because it’s not in your heart. You have to take responsibility to get your heart right and it starts by literally replacing one thought with another.

As parents we all have experienced changing dirty diapers. Step one is to take off the old, then step two, replace the diaper with a clean one. When your puppy makes a mess in the corner you don’t just put a newspaper over it, you fully wipe it clean. As we fill our hearts with God’s Word we are also removing the negatives that have so limited our lives and putting in God’s best.

Most people make a good confession when they think about it: “I believe I am healed. I believe all of my needs are met. God is prospering my business. God is blessing me. My steps are ordered of the Lord.” But when they are in casual conversation throughout the day the confessions that spoke and read out loud take a backseat to the overwhelming reality of the moment and they say things like, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. We are going broke. My back is killing me.”